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Russia Cuts Gas Deliveries to Belarus

MOSCOW — Russia cut deliveries of natural gas deliveries to Belarus over $200 million in unpaid debts on Monday, warning that supplies would be reduced by as much as 85 percent over the coming days, but taking pains to assure Europe that its customers would not be affected.

“We will pay — not today perhaps, but possibly within two weeks,” said the first deputy prime minister, Vladimir Semashko, at a news conference in the capital, Minsk. “We will find a way. Maybe we will have to borrow, but we will pay.”

He then ordered Gazprom to gradually reduce supplies sent through Belarus, whose pipelines carry roughly a fifth of Russia’s exports westward to other European nations, supplying customers in Lithuania, Poland and Germany. The flow of gas was cut by 15 percent on Monday, and Russia said it would gradually increase that portion up to 85 percent.

The decision arises in a tendentious political context, as President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko refused to sign off on the customs union with Russia and Kazakhstan, to Russia’s south.

In protest of Russian oil tariffs, Belarus has refused to sign off on the start of the customs union, which Moscow created in 1991 in hopes of forging a permanent economic alliance of post-Soviet countries.

“It would be good if our Russian partners realized that their relationships within the C.I.S. do not have to be based on Russian terms,” said the Belarussian prime minister, Andrei Kobyakov, who was in St. Petersburg for the International Economic Forum last weekend. The C.I.S. is the Commonwealth of Independent States, the union Moscow created in 1991 in hopes of preserving a post-Soviet alliance.

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The rift has widened over geopolitics, too, as Belarus offered a safe haven to Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev, the Kyrgyzstan president forced from office this spring by a popular uprising that was encouraged by Russia. In the wake of his ouster, when Russia rallied its post-Soviet allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a regional security group, to approve stabilization measures for Kyrgyzstan, only Belarus demurred.

Vitaly Y. Yermakov, research director for Russia at the international consulting firm IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said he believed that the gas spat grew out of negotiations on the customs union. Belarus has accrued debt because it has continued paying $150 per thousand cubic meters of gas despite a scheduled price increase to $189, and is hoping to use the standoff to wring concessions from Russia, he said.

“Gambling with Gazprom on the gas front is not going to help Lukashenko get any leverage,” Mr. Yermakov said. “Russia has the power balance on its side.”

Still, any gas shutoff poses some risk for Russia during a season when it is taking pains to repair its image as a reliable partner for European capitals. Early last year, Gazprom’s pricing disputes with Belarus’s neighbor to the south, Ukraine — which transports 80 percent of Russian gas exports to Europe — left millions of homes without heating fuel, infuriating European leaders.

Moscow seemed intent of calming fears of shortages on Monday, saying Ukrainian pipelines could temporarily carry Belarus’s share of European supplies. The company that oversees Ukraine’s gas transit to Europe, Ukrtransgaz, announced that five days ago it received an order to increase its capacity, and was prepared to do so.

Maureen Holzner, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, said she did not expect Europe to be affected, in part because summertime demand drops so far that Germany, for example, stockpiles gas for months. Only Lithuania is 100 percent dependent on Belarusian pipelines, she said.

Mr. Semashko, Belarus’s deputy prime minister, forecast a resolution soon. “We trust our partners, and if we agree to pay Russia in the morning, they will give us the gas by evening, so there is nothing frightening going on,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on June 22, 2010, on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: WORLD BRIEFING | EUROPE; Russia: Gas Deliveries Cut To Belarus Over Unpaid Debt. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe